Wendy Carlos (born Walter
Carlos on 14 November 1939) is an American composer and electronic musician. Carlos first came
to notice in the late 1960s with recordings made on the Moog
synthesizer, then a relatively new and unknown instrument; most
notable were LPs of synthesized Bach and the soundtrack for Stanley
Kubrick's controversial film A Clockwork Orange.
Several years previously, two original Carlos compositions using
classical (pre-Moog) electronic techniques had been issued on LP
(Variations for Flute and Tape and Dialogues for Piano
and Two Loudspeakers). Although the first Carlos Moog albums
were interpretations of the works of classical composers, she later
resumed releasing original compositions.

Contents

Work

Switched-On Bach (1968) was an
early album demonstrating the use of the synthesizer as a genuine
musical instrument. As an early user of Robert Moog's first commercially available
synthesizer modules (Moog assembled these as custom installations
that differed greatly from user to user), Walter Carlos helped
pioneer the technology, which was significantly more difficult to
use than it is today. Multitrack recording techniques
played a critical role in the time-consuming process of creating
this album. Switched-On Bach was the last project in his
four-year-long collaboration with Benjamin Folkman and won gold
records for both Carlos and Folkman. The album then became one of
the first classical LPs to sell 500,000 copies, and (eventually) to
go platinum.

Sonic
Seasonings (1972) was packaged as a double album, with one
side dedicated to each of the four seasons, and each side
consisting of one long track. The album blended recorded sounds
with synthesized sounds, occasionally employing melodies, to create
an ambient effect. Not as popular as some other Carlos albums, it
was influential on other artists who went on to create the ambient genre. In
1971, Carlos composed and recorded music for A Clockwork Orange. She
worked with Stanley Kubrick again on the score for
The
Shining, though in the end Kubrick mostly used
pre-existing music cues by other composers.

In 1982, she scored the film Tron for Disney. This score incorporated
orchestra, chorus, organ, and both analog and digital
synthesizers. Some of her end-title music featuring the Royal Albert Hall Organ was
replaced with a song by Journey, and the music that originally
was composed for the lightcycle scene was dropped. Digital
Moonscapes (1984) switched to digital synthesizers from the
analog synthesizers that were the trademark of her earlier albums.
Some of the unused material from the Tron soundtrack was incorporated into
it.

Beauty in the Beast (1986) saw Carlos experimenting
with various tunings, including just intonation, Balinese scales and
several scales she invented for the album. One of her scales
involved setting a "root note", and retuning all of the notes on
the keyboard to just intonation intervals from the root note. There
are a total of 144 possible notes per octave in this system: 12
notes in a chromatic scale times 12 different keys. Other scales
included Carlos's Alpha & Beta scales, which experimented with
dividing the octave into a non-integral number of equally-spaced
intervals. These explorations in effect supplemented the more
systematic microtonal studies of the composer Easley Blackwood, whose etudes on all
twelve equal-tempered scales between 13 and 24 notes per octave had
appeared in 1980.

Secrets of Synthesis (1987) is a lecture by Carlos with
audio examples (many from her own recordings), expounding on topics
she feels to be of importance. Some of the material is an
introduction to synthesis, and some (e.g., a discussion of hocket) is aimed at experienced
musicians.

Beginning in 1998, all of her catalogue was remastered. In 2005,
the two-volume set Rediscovering Lost Scores was released,
featuring previously out-of-print material, including the
unreleased soundtrack to Woundings, and music composed and
recorded for The Shining, Tron and A
Clockwork Orange that was not used in the films.

Personal
life

Carlos was born as Walter Carlos in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and
began musical education at age six with piano lessons. Following
undergraduate studies of music and physics at Brown
University accompanied by early explorations of electronic
music, Carlos earned a master's degree in composition at Columbia
University, studying there with Vladimir Ussachevsky, a pioneer in
electronic music (other teachers included Otto Luening and Jack
Beeson). Remaining in New York after graduation, Carlos met Robert Moog and was one
of his earliest customers, providing feedback for his further
development of the Moog synthesizer. Around 1966, Carlos
met Rachel Elkind, who produced Switched-On
Bach and other early albums. With the proceeds of
Switched-On Bach, the two renovated a New York brownstone, which they
shared as a home and as business premises, installing a studio for
live and electronic recording on the bottom floor. Carlos took the
unusual step of enclosing the entire studio in a Faraday cage,
shielding the equipment from radio and television interference.[1]

The artist's first recordings were released under the name
Walter Carlos. Carlos underwent sex reassignment surgery in
1972[2][3] but was
billed as "Walter" on the album By Request (1975). The
first release credited to her as "Wendy" was Switched-On
Brandenburgs (1979). Carlos's first public appearance after
her gender transition was in an interview in the May 1979 issue of
Playboy magazine, a decision she
regrets because of the unwelcome publicity it brought to her
personal life, notably in Baker's Biographical Dictionary of
Musicians, where her surgery was described in anatomical
detail. On her official site, her transition is discussed in
an essay stating that she values her privacy on the subject.[4]

In 1998, Carlos sued the songwriter/artist Momus for $22 million[5]
for his satirical song "Walter Carlos" (which appeared on the album
The Little Red Songbook),
which suggested that if Wendy could go back in time she could marry
Walter. The case was settled out of court, with Momus agreeing to
remove it from the CD and owing $30,000 in legal fees.[6]

Awards and
honors

Best Classical Performance - Instrumental Soloist Or
Soloists (With Or Without Orchestra)

Best Engineered Recording, Classical

In 2005 Carlos was the recipient of the SEAMUS Award "in
recognition of lifetime achievement and contribution to the art and
craft of electro-acoustic music" by the Society for
Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States.[10]

Discography

(Albums released during years 1965–1975 were originally released
under name "Walter Carlos". Later albums and all re-issues have
been released under the name "Wendy Carlos".)

Electronic Music (1965) LP. Vox Turnabout. Includes
two compositions by Walter Carlos: Dialogues for Piano and Two
Loudspeakers (with Phillip Ramey, pianist) and Variations
for Flute and Tape (with John Heiss, flutist).